June 23
Life in the jungle: There was thunder and lightning and a little bit of rain last night. I made my patio stones first thing this morning. I decided to take a break from my clothing website that I started a little over a week ago. I posted two Belize blog posts to my website. Because of no internet for 18 months, I am over 1 year behind in my blog posts. I wonder if I will ever get caught up. I also started the first day of an online video school. I need to focus on Belize video content to grow my social media channels. Except I know nothing about video.
My YouTube channel – Safari Arie (Please subscribe)
June 24
Life in the jungle: I slept in for a bit this morning. There was a very heavy rain shower at some point that caused me to have to close my windows, therefore, keeping my bedroom dark. Once up and moving around I made my dozen patio stones.
I am still waiting for my Safari Arie logo to be updated for my clothing line. The other day I reached out to a graphic designer on the platform Fiverr for this work and am now in the waiting stages. I ended up watching days 2 & 3 of this video course I started yesterday. My day didn’t feel very productive and I did end up taking a nap.
A good sized land snail
June 25
Life in the jungle: I felt very unmotivated today. It was Sunday (my Sabbath) so I had an excuse to do nothing. I kind of had it in my head yesterday to spend part of today outside. People don’t believe me when I say that I am the laziest person I know. Basically, I did nothing but laundry in the morning, and later in the day, I did a little bit of writing for my book about my 2019-21 bike ride. I can’t even remember the last time I did some writing on my book. Possibly January. I got another 1,900 words for the first draft of the Mexico part written. It was right in the middle of some of the craziest memories of Mexico. It has me missing my life on a bike. This morning, some of my chicks started hatchling.
Baby chicks – finally
June 26
Life in the jungle: I was determined to work outside all day today after so much time in front of the computer recently. My morning was slightly delayed by a heavy but short rain shower. I then made my dozen patio stones. I headed to the ponds to chop. I discovered that so far, the ponds have received enough rain that I can start to plant seedlings. The planting week starts tomorrow based on planting by the moon phases. Until this afternoon, I was thinking I was going to wait until next month for any planting.
I noticed lots of baby iguanas at the ponds. They were impossible to catch. Back at the house, I watched a YouTube video on being able to catch them super easy at night.
I planted some passion fruit (vines) around the house and in the coconut field. I took a look around in the coconut field. I have been way too afraid to walk around the coconut field this last month because of the lack of rain. Things are better than expected. There are still some dead seedlings, but it doesn’t look like anything more than what I have noticed in the past few months already. But once I start replanting, I will have a better idea. I am actually quite stressed about chopping the field. The extreme dry kept weed growth to a minimum. But I need to start chopping again and I have zero time for that. The coconut field is too dry to plant seedlings. At the end of the day, I brought two wheelbarrow loads of seedlings to the ponds. There was more rain tonight.
At 9:30 PM I went to the ponds and there were baby iguanas everywhere sleeping on the tall grasses. I saw like 20 of them in 10 minutes and they were super easy to catch while they slept.
A good sized Cane Toad
June 27
Life in the jungle: I made my patio stones first thing. It started raining right after I finished making them. After breakfast, I headed to the ponds and spent most of the whole day at the ponds planting. I planted over 70 assorted seedlings (29 pomegranates, 16 custard apples, 4 Chinese custard apples and 24 limes). There was on-and-off rain through much of the day. Things were pretty wet but I am not complaining at all. Late in the afternoon, I headed to the village for groceries. I am pretty exhausted. There was some more rain this evening.
June 28
Life in the jungle: There was more rain throughout the night. Today was passport stamp day in Belmopan. I literally had to do some running today. Their debit machine at immigration was out of order. I had to run to the bank, run back to immigration, and then run to catch the bus. But I did make it on the next bus back to Belize City. Running is not a good idea in a tropical climate because once you stop running you become soaked in sweat. I was only able to get 2 months’ worth the passport stamps. My passport will expire before the end of September. This means I can’t really fool around with my renewal. I plan to come back to the city tomorrow to bring everything to the Canadian consulate for a new passport.
Back home I headed to the ponds and planted another 30 seedlings. I did a quick seedling inventory of the ponds. Between last year and the last few days, I have planted a total of 107 lime, 29 pomegranates, 51 custard apples, 4 avocados, and 13 jackfruit seedlings. And that doesn’t include the 38 mature and 18 young coconut trees already there. Admittedly a lot of the lime seedlings are not planted in an ideal location which is in part why I planted lime trees because I have tons of lime seedlings. I have places for 7 more custard apple seedlings and then ponds will then be planted out.
Black tail Cribo snake
June 29
Life in the jungle: Back to the city this morning. Today was all about getting my passport photos and application printed and delivered to the Canadian consulate. Everything went smoothly and was completed in about two hours. I realized this passport thing is about the first challenge that I accomplished with no grief in like 19 months. That is/was sort of a head trip to realize this.
The Caribbean Sea from Belize City
This afternoon, I moved my recently moved patio stones to the greenhouse. The current count is 415 made stones. I am getting close to halfway to the almost 900 needed.
June 30
Life in the jungle: I made my dozen patio stones first thing. I had plans to work on my website. I then had problems with some graphics. And I wasn’t finding any solutions. I was frustrated about wasting my day. I went outside and made four replacement patio stone molds. I then realized I should take advantage of a dry day and cut the grass at the ponds.
Belize Part 84 (June 10 to 22)
Of Note: At this time I am currently 11 to 12 months behind in posting my Belize blog posts due to having no internet for the first 18 months of living in Belize.
Glossary of Terms
Glossary of words or people that may or may not be part of this blog post. This glossary will be at the bottom of every blog post for Belize.
Jack & Jill – These are my ex-property managers (names changed). They are Canadian, they introduced me to Belize in 1997, sold me their house in Belize in 2003, and rebuilt my house from 2014 to 2018. I have known them for over 30 years. After almost 20 years of me supporting their life here in Belize Jack decided quite unexpectedly to declare “war” on me right before Christmas 2021. They would end up stealing my business license and causing me a lot of grief. They live on the farm, but not on my land.
Wayne – He is the son of the original owners of the farm (both owners are deceased). The original farm was 2 – 30 acre pieces minus 2 – ¾ acre parcels for my house and 2 – ¾ acre parcels that Jack & Jill own which were all originally purchased from the original owners. In 2017 Wayne sold me 40 acres of land from the original 60 acres (30 acres plus 10 acres). Wayne lives in his parent’s house and has a few cows on his remaining 17 acres of land.
The ponds – I have 2 large (300ft long x 50ft wide x 10ft deep) ponds on my 30 acre parcel of land which is basically a jungle. I have about 60 coconut trees (mostly mature) around the ponds. In my first 2 years of living in Belize, I also planted about 250 assort fruit tree seedlings (Lime, jackfruit, custard apple, pomegranate and avocado).
The coconut field – I have about 400 coconut trees planted (various growth states) on about 3 acres of cleared land of the 10 acre parcel. I plan to add various fruit trees to the same field as soon as I can.
The river lot – my house sits on an ¾ acre lot. I have a second joining ¾ acre lot that allows me river frontage on the Belize River. I call that my river lot.
The dry – Belize has 2 main seasons. The rainy season and the dry (no rain). The wet is obviously the rainy season.
Chopping – using my machete to clear brush, vines, weeds and unwanted trees.
